


Let’s finish the race (while our hearts are young)

by bechloehuh, eliseboobman (bechloehuh)



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, bechloe endgame obviously, one shot based on pitch perfect 2, starts with jeca although there's not much interaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:36:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/bechloehuh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/eliseboobman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe stands next to you, like she always does, and you try not to smile too much, but Chloe has her arm wrapped around your waist, and she turns to look at you, and she doesn't really say anything. You’re used to being this close to her, and you noticed how blue her eyes were a long time ago, but each time she looks at you like this, it’s like your stomach is learning to do back-flips for the very first time. And you give your biggest smile to the camera as you all shout ‘Bellas.’ You may have made the picture your lock screen, but that’s no big deal.</p><p>or</p><p>The one where Chloe is an absolute sweetheart as usual, Beca is a newly-confused tiny bisexual, and somehow the story became angstier than I intended????</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let’s finish the race (while our hearts are young)

**Author's Note:**

> Small Pitch Perfect 2 spoilers

_"_ one day when the stories are told / there’ll be no more words to fill the page / one night when the stars are gone / there’ll be no more light to guide the way / right now we’re crazy youngsters / time is running out but who cares we’re running free / they call us crazy youngsters / we don’t apologize we’re mad and running free / they call us crazy youngsters / time is running out but who cares we’re running free / hell yeah we’re crazy youngsters / don’t apologize we’re mad and running free”

– ester dean, crazy youngsters

///

You don’t realize you’re crying until the words you’re reading start to get more and more blurry.

It’s a Saturday, and you should be out with the girls, but instead you’re sat on your bed in sweatpants that you’ve been wearing for two days, reading over an email that you got this morning. There’s an empty ice cream tub at the side of your bed that you finished earlier, and you don’t even have it in you to put it in the trash, because the trashcan is at the other side of the room and you haven’t moved in two hours, and you’re definitely not gonna be moving any time soon either.

You had been talking to Fat Amy this morning about what you’re going to do after graduation. She told you that she’d just end up marrying Bumper or something, and you wondered if she was serious, because you can never tell when Fat Amy is joking or not. Jumping straight into marriage is not something you see Amy doing, but then again, it’s not like you know that much about her. You’ve been distant from the group for a while now, and maybe it’s because you’re getting older and you’re kind of excited for the real world, or maybe it’s because you’re scared. Scared that if you get to know them, the harder it will be to say goodbye to them.

Three years ago Chloe Beale told you that you shouldn’t ever say goodbye to someone unless you’re never going to see that person again, and you can’t stand thinking about how you’ll never see the girls again. How you’ll never see _Chloe_ again. So you try and hold back from saying goodbye. You opt on “see you later” instead. It’s less of a loaded phrase.

While talking to Fat Amy, you received an email from one of the companies you’d hoped you would be interning at. Except, they told you that they already had enough interns and they don’t have time for any more, and you’d be fine with that, if it wasn’t the sixth company that turned you down. You’d just shrugged it off when Fat Amy asked you who it was, because as much as you love Fat Amy, you don’t want her sympathy. You don’t need anyone’s sympathy, despite how much your head tells you that you do.

Or maybe you do. Maybe the one person you want sympathy from is currently out having fun without you, probably dancing with Stacie and Cynthia Rose to music that you don’t even like, but the jealousy is still there. You hate to admit that.

It’s late. Almost midnight, and the girls should be back soon. You think Lily might have stayed at home, probably Chloe’s orders to look after you. But if she did, she hasn’t bothered you. You’d like to say that you’re not exactly happy that Chloe thinks you need a babysitter, but you can’t fault her. She gets you. She knows when you need your space.

Right now, it’s like you don’t have enough of it.

You don’t wipe the tears away because you’re pretty sure that once you do, more will follow, and you’d rather not be that girl hysterically crying in the middle her room because of a missed intern opportunity. Instead, you close your emails tab and type _Netflix_ into the search bar. Chloe had convinced you a while back to watch Breaking Bad, and while it’s not exactly a show you’d expect her to watch, the two of you binge watched the first two seasons of it in a few days and you actually really enjoyed it.

The tears on your cheeks are drying up, so you lift the hem of your shirt up and wipe them, before settling down on your bed and starting Season 3. Of course, it doesn’t really help, because you’re still crying hours later, and anybody would think it’s because of this episode of Breaking Bad, but you’re not even paying attention to it.

You don’t notice that the girls are back until you hear a knock on your door, and there’s only one person you know who does that tune when she knocks. You’re not sure if it’s a good thing that you can distinguish Chloe Beale’s knock from everybody else’s, so you just kind of ignore that fact as you sit up in bed and wipe your eyes. You put your laptop down on your bed and rush over to the mirror, and you cringe when you see the mascara stains under your eyes, and the redness on your cheeks from where you’ve wiped them so many times.

“Beca!” You hear through the door. “You awake?”

She tries to open the door but it’s locked, and you tell her you’ll be just a second, before you run your hands through your hair and try and make yourself look presentable – or at least, you try and make yourself look like you haven’t been crying for three hours.

It doesn’t work.

But Chloe is getting impatient because she keeps knocking, and you finally unlock the door and open it to see her with a bottle of wine in one hand and a bag in the other.

“Hey.” You say, trying to be nonchalant, but she frowns as she looks you up and down. It makes you uncomfortable, even though Chloe’s probably seen you in much worse states than this before.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Are you?”

“Have you been crying?” she asks you, ignoring the question. You just shake your head as you watch her try and keep herself upright against the wall.

“No.”

“Beca.”

“I haven’t. I’m just tired.”

“You’re also a bad liar.”

Her speech is slurred, and it seems like she can’t stand up properly because she’s swaying from side to side, so you open the door fully for her, and she walks into your room, immediately dropping down on your bed.

“So what’s up?” you ask, because as much as you love your best friend, you’d really just prefer being alone right now.

Or maybe it’s because you’re 100% certain that Chloe will be able to cheer you up – she always does – but you’re not done moping yet.

“I missed you so I went to 7 Eleven and bought some wine and snacks for us.”

You ignore the weird feeling in your stomach at the ‘I missed you’ part – you don’t know what that was all about – and you just sit down next to her. At a reasonable distance, because you don’t really need to be reminded of how warm Chloe is right now. You’re hoping she doesn’t offer to hug you, because you know for a fact that you’ll probably end up crying and you don’t need that, even though you’re not fully cried out yet.

“What snacks have you got?”

“Why have you been crying?” she asks, ignoring your question again. “And don’t say you’ve been watching a sad movie because I can see you’ve been watching Breaking Bad and that TV show is _not_ sad.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It sure looks like it.” She says with a smirk, and you fight the urge to smile. “And the empty ice cream tubs and the smell of brooding? What’s that all about?”

“I do not brood. I have not been brooding. There is no brooding happening here.”

“Okay then, Broody Beca.”

“Shut up.”

A small laugh comes out before you can even help it, and the smile Chloe gives you almost makes your heart stop. You’re starting to wonder why you even let her in your room in the first place.

You hate that she can always make you smile, even when you’re feeling off.

You watch as she stands up and takes her coat off, draping it at the end of your bed before she sits back down. She reaches down and takes her shoes off, kicking them off before moving to sit cross-legged in front of you.

“I got you Reese’s pieces, because I know they’re your favorite.” She says, opening the bag and pulling the bag of Reese’s pieces out. “I also got you some beer because I know you don’t really like wine that much, but you can still have some wine if you want. Or not. It’s late, so you probably don’t want to drink. And I got some Twizzlers, some Hershey’s Kisses, some Candy Corn, and some Life Savers for me. You can have some if you want, though. I also got two slices of carrot cake because we’ve gotta have something healthy here, right?”

When Chloe looks up at you, you’re crying again.

You don’t realize, again, until Chloe’s eyes widen and she puts down the bag and scooches closer to you. Her hands are on your cheeks before you even realize she’s stopped talking, and she’s asking you why you’re crying again and if you’re okay, and it’s just all too much.

Your lip quivers as you fall into her, and she strokes your hair as you silently cry into her shoulder. You’re sitting at an awkward angle and it’s hurting your neck, and you’re hand is placed awkwardly on Chloe’s leg, while your other one is holding you up, but Chloe is holding you for the first time in ages, and suddenly the awkward kink in your neck doesn’t matter anymore.

Chloe smells like vodka and red bull, and a little bit like Beyoncé perfume, and you feel bad that you’re getting tears on her shirt, but she keeps on telling you that it’s going to be okay, and it’s not really helping to stop the whole crying thing.

You don’t know when you became this emotional wreck, but lately things just haven’t been going your way, and you’re kind of just sick of everything. Jesse’s never there for you as much as he used to be. You and Jesse don’t really seem to be working out lately, and you haven’t been for a while now. And you haven’t been hanging out with the girls lately because of job interviews and studying for finals. And whenever you do hang out, it always seems to be about acapella, and what songs you’ve prepared for them, and if you’ve set up any more gigs, and if you’ve heard anything from John and Gail about getting reinstated. And everyone is counting on you for everything, and if you would have known it would be this hard being captain of a damn acapella team, you wouldn’t have taken the pitch pipe from Aubrey three years ago.

You don’t have any regrets, though. You’re not a regretful person, and you certainly don’t regret ever joining the Bellas. They’re annoying, and they can be too much to handle most days, and they expect a lot from you, and sometimes they really need whipping into shape, but they’re your family, and you love every single one of them.

You don’t tell them enough, though, and lately you’ve been too busy to actually spend time with them outside of rehearsals, despite how you all live together.

It breaks your heart knowing that time is running out.

Eventually, after you’ve stopped crying, and after Chloe has finished stroking your hair and telling you to ‘ _shhh_ ’, you finally pull away from her and wipe your eyes with the back of your hands.

“Sorry.” you breathe out with a nervous laugh, because really, you don’t know what else to say.

And it’s not often that you don’t know what to say to Chloe.

She tells you it’s okay, and she reaches out for both of your hands, and you smile at her, and you blink back the tears and swallow the lump in the back of your throat. This is all so intimate, and you don’t know how you always end up in these situations with Chloe, but it always seems to happen, and it almost _always_ ends in the same way.

“So I think I’m gonna go to sleep.” You say, and you watch Chloe’s tight-lipped smile slowly fade, until she just nods at you. But she’s still holding your hands, and stroking her thumbs across your skin, and she looks sad.

You hate that.

“Chloe–“

“–You know you can talk to me, right?” she interrupts. You nod. You don’t exactly know what she’s getting at here, but you just nod, and you squeeze her hand, and she smiles at you.

Oh, that smile.

That smile holds you together and breaks your heart all at the same time.

“Okay.” She says.

And then she lets go of your hands, and she reaches up and cups your cheeks again, and your heart almost stops when you see that she’s leaning in.

She’s so close, and you don’t know what to do.

You close your eyes.

Then she places a kiss on your forehead, and you squeeze your eyes tighter when she lingers there for a few seconds.

“Get some sleep.” She whispers against your forehead, and she pulls away before you can even think to say anything else.

Your eyes are still closed when you hear your bedroom door close quietly.

Her coat is still on your bed, and you swear, you fall asleep to the smell of her perfume.

////

You think about that night for quite a while.

It pops up at the most random times. When you’re finding songs to perform at the Worlds, or when you’re – unwillingly – watching a movie with the Bellas, or when you’re coming up with choreography with Chloe. You think about how nice Chloe was to you. Chloe has been so stressed out lately since the incident at the Kennedy Center, and you’ve lost count of how many back massages you’ve had to give her. And sometimes she snaps at you, more often than not lately, because even you can admit, you’re a bit of an asshole sometimes, and it doesn’t take much to get under her skin.

It’s okay though, because all of you are stressed out. You’re graduating soon, and there’s a lot of stuff to worry about.

But that night, Chloe was so nice to you. So gentle, and calming.

It’s weird.

She’s your best friend. That’s what best friends are for. To make you feel better, and to calm you down when you’re hysterical. But that night was different somehow, because normally Chloe would ask you what you’re so upset about, and she wouldn’t stop asking until you told her, or she’d end up tickling it out of you. But no, she just let you cry, and she held you and she didn’t ask questions. And it was perfect.

It was exactly what you needed, and it’s something that you’ve apparently needed for a long time now. And maybe that’s what you need.

You just need something new.

///

Jesse calls you a few days after ‘that night’ telling you he needs to talk.

You know for a fact that it’s bad, because nobody ever says those words to someone when they have good news. For some reason, the phrase is just a bad phrase, and you try not to think too much about it when you leave the Bella house to go see him.

He asked you to meet him outside the treble house, and your heart is pounding as you walk over there. You feel sick, and you have to stop a few times to catch your breath, and it takes all you have in you not to turn back and tell him that you can talk some other time.

He’s sitting on the wall outside, and you clear your throat as you approach him, and he stands up with a smile and hugs you, but he doesn’t kiss you like he usually does, and you know now, that this is it.

“You okay?” you ask him, and he nods, and he smiles again.

He does that a lot. He smiles, even when there’s no need to. He’s a happy person in general, and he has been ever since you met him. But his smile isn’t as happy as it used to be, and today it all seems… fake.

“You wanna walk?” he asks you. You just nod as you fall into step beside him, and you wait for him to reach down and hold your hand, or put his arm around you like he normally does, but it doesn’t happen.

You find yourself, for some reason, thinking about Chloe. Chloe likes to link arms with you when you walk, and for some reason you feel that yours and Chloe’s arms link together better than yours and Jesse’s hands do.

You shake yourself of those thoughts, because right now isn’t about Chloe, it’s about you and Jesse.

“How was your day?” Jesse asks you, and you clench your teeth, because he always does this. He’s the worst at beating around the bush, and right now, you don’t think you can take it.

You stop walking, and it takes him a second to realize.

“What is this?” you ask when he looks at you. “I know you, Jesse, and you _definitely_ didn’t ask me to meet up with you just to ask how my day has been.”

He’s not making eye contact with you, and you want to walk over to him, to make him look at you. But right now, you’re scared, and you’re know what’s about to happen, and you don’t think being that close to him right now is a good idea.

“Jesse.”

“We’re graduating, Becs.”

His voice is quiet, and the way he says ‘Becs’ sounds nothing like the way Chloe says it.

You really have to stop comparing them both.

“I know.” You say.

“I need to know if you love me.”

You did not expect that.

“What?”

“If you love me, and you’re sure of it, then this whole graduating and moving away thing won’t be that hard. We’ll be able to sort something out, like we always do. But if you don’t see a future with me, then I think we should end this.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“You’re asking me to decide my future right now?”

“Becs, that’s not. No. I’m asking you if you love me.”

You frown, taking a step back.

You try to say the words ‘of course I love you’ but for some reason, they don’t come out. The words get stuck in your throat, and you know for a fact that if you were having this conversation a few months ago, you wouldn’t hesitate at all. You do love Jesse, and you’re certain of it.

You’re not _in_ love with him, though.

“I do.” You don’t say the word ‘love’, but he knows what you mean. “I do, but–“

“–I knew there’d be a but–“

“–I don’t think I see us having a future together. I hate that I don’t see it, trust me, but… I’m sorry, I’m not in love with you.”

He nods, and for some reason, this is easier than you thought. Not technically easy, but it’s not as hard as you expected. He’s looking at you like when you had your first argument before you even got together, and you’re not sure what to do or say now.

“That’s all I needed to know.” He says.

“That’s it?”

“I guess.” He laughs nervously, and surely, it can’t be this easy.

He moves first, reaching out a hand for you. And you take his hand, and you let him pull you in for a hug, and you can’t, for the life of you, stop thinking about how his hugs are so different from Chloe’s.

You part ways with an awkward smile, a kiss on the cheek, and a wave goodbye, and it all just seems too fast for you. Three years together, and this is how it ends. He yells ‘Becaw!’ at you as you walk away, and you can’t help but smile, because you know that, in time, the two of you will end up being together again. Not romantically, but you’ll find each other, and you’ll be able to look at each other as friends again, and you’ll both be fine. You just need time.

You spend the walk back thinking about a lot of things, but the main subject is Chloe. It always is.

You wonder if you should tell her. You’ve already been keeping a lot of secrets from her, with the internships and everything, so you decide to tell her when you get the chance.

When you get back, the Bellas are having a pillow fight while singing Torn, and you feel like you’ve just walked into a fucking acapella orgy.

///

Graduation comes around quicker than you expected.

It’s strange, that you’re already graduating. You hate being sentimental – you actually despise it – but it feels like just yesterday when you arrived at Barden on your first day. You’ve come a long way since then, and you never thought that you’d be here today, still in the Bellas, actually leading them to the World Championships. Before Barden, you didn’t even realize that acapella was such a _big_ thing. You’d seen acapella groups on YouTube, performing in front of a few people, but you never thought it’d be as big as what it is now, and you never, in a million years, thought you’d be performing for the president.

You’re still convinced that the whole thing at the Kennedy Center was a dream. Except in your dream, Fat Amy is wearing underwear, and the Bellas don’t get suspended for flashing the president, and you know, the whole of America doesn’t hate you.

You’d like to say that you refused to wear the bright green cap and gown, but Chloe forced it on you – you say forced, but everybody knows that’s not the case – and you wait for the others in front of the Bella house while Emily waits to take your picture.

Chloe stands next to you, like she always does, and you try not to smile too much, but Chloe has her arm wrapped around your waist, and she turns to look at you, and she doesn’t really say anything. You’re used to being this close to her, and you noticed how blue her eyes were a _long_ time ago, but each time she looks at you like this, it’s like your stomach is learning to do backflips for the very first time.

And you give your biggest smile to the camera as you all shout ‘Bellas.’

You may have made the picture your lock screen, but that’s no big deal.

Before you head to the ceremony, you feel your phone vibrating in your pocket, and you take it out to see that it’s Jesse, which surprises you. You don’t answer it. Maybe it’s because today is about the Bellas, because God forbid you’ll have another day like this again, where you’re all together, not stressing over a dance routine or a set list.

He texts you afterwards, telling you that he’ll be on the third row from the back if you want to watch the ceremony together, and you feel bad, but you’re gonna be standing with the girls today, no questions asked.

You text him telling him that you’ll see him at the after party, and he sends back a smiling emoji.

You look around you as you put your phone in your pocket, and immediately notice that Chloe isn’t around. The ceremony is in just less than an hour, and you all need to get there to get a seat. You ask Amy where she might’ve gone, but she mentions something about “not understanding gingers”, so you head upstairs to see if she’s in her room.

You find her sitting on the floor beside her bed, staring at the wall.

“Hey.” You say, almost tripping over your gown as you walk into hers and Stacie’s room.

She looks up at you and smiles, but it’s not a normal Chloe Beale smile. It kind of makes you sad.

It’s a very bittersweet day, you realize.

“I didn’t think anybody would notice I was gone.” Chloe says, and you frown, sitting down beside her.

“Are you kidding me, Chlo?” You bump your shoulder with hers, and you know that something is wrong because she just sniffles, and you absolutely _hate_ when Chloe cries. “It’s hard not to notice that the best member of our group is missing.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m saying it because I mean it.”

Chloe smiles, and only then do you realize that she has a tissue in her hand. She brings it up to wipe her eyes, and you bite your lip, before wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Don’t cry on me now, Beale.” You say, and you swear you can feel your heart break when she laughs through her tears.

You don’t blame her for crying, though. You don’t know what’s in store for you after today. You’ll be performing at the Worlds, and then that’ll be it. You’ll all be going your separate ways, and you honestly cannot express how much it’s going to break your heart saying goodbye to all the Bellas – saying goodbye to _Chloe_.

You clench your jaw, because you’ll be damned if both of you start crying now. Chloe has already comforted you more times than you can count in the past few months, so the least you could do is actually try and make her smile.

“Hey.” You say, squeezing her shoulder. You retract your arm from where it was draped around her, and you look down at your wrist, where two of your favorite bracelets are.

You take one of them off, the black one with the silver studs on, and you can feel Chloe’s eyes on you as you do so. Then you look at her, and you ask her to hold her wrist out, and she obliges immediately, and you pretend not to notice the tear slide down her cheek as you put the bracelet on her. It’s big for her, like it is for you, but it suits her, in an unusual way.

You let your hand linger on Chloe’s for a while, until she slides her hand into yours, squeezing tightly.

You finally let yourself cry when she puts her head on your shoulder.

You don’t let go of her hand until Amy tells you that you should be leaving for the ceremony.

///

“What are you gonna do after the worlds?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want?”

You turn to look at Chloe, who is sitting beside you against the wall. You’re just outside the Bella house, drinking out of a bottle of cheap, disgusting wine, which you’re pretty sure isn’t actually wine. The trebles are hosting the graduation party, and the two of you decided to steal two bottles and chill by yourselves for a while. You know for a fact that Fat Amy or Stacie will end up finding you both, but right now, you’re enjoying just being with Chloe.

Neither of you have really said much, other than the odd question, or statement complaining about it being a pretty boring night, so when Chloe asks you that question, you don’t really know what to say.

There’s a million things going through your mind right now, so you just take the bottle from Chloe’s hands, take a swig, and then pass her it back.

“I don’t know.” You say, because you truly don’t.

When you arrived at Barden three years ago, you were dead set on staying at University for a year, before moving to L.A to try and become a music producer. But now, you’ve seen how hard it is to make it, and you’re pretty sure that if you went through with your plan, you wouldn’t have survived a year in L.A before moving back to Barden. Everything is so different now, with the Bellas, and with your dad, and with Chloe.

Chloe just seems to be at the forefront of your mind all of the time lately, and you’re not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“I’m scared.” Chloe tells you, taking a swig of the wine. She makes a disgusted face at the taste, and you laugh as you take the bottle off of her. “I’m scared of leaving all of this behind.”

“Me too.” You say. You don’t take a drink this time. You feel that this conversation will need your full attention.

“My parents probably hate me for failing so much.”

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s kind of hard to hate you, Beale.”

You feel Chloe turn towards you, but you don’t look at her.

“What, have you tried to hate me?”

“At first.” You laugh. “Then I realized that it was never going to happen. Now I just tolerate you.”

She hits your arm with the back of her hand, and you laugh as you take another drink of the wine.

You have a feeling that tonight, that this night with Chloe, is just going to end the same way as every party does. With Chloe getting distracted, or someone pulling her away from you, and you acting as if you haven’t just laid yourself out bare for her. Because right now, you’re pretty sure she could ask you anything, and you’d tell her the truth. It’s times like these, with Chloe sitting beside you, where you’re not afraid to be your small, vulnerable self.

You trust Chloe with that part of you, and you think you could learn to trust her with all of you.

“It’s getting cold.” Chloe says, and you look at her, noticing that she only has a shirt and jeans on. You’re wearing a leather jacket _and_ a light hoodie, so it’s only fair that you share with her.

“Here.” You say, taking your jacket off. You turn so you’re resting on your knees, and you wrap it around her like a cape, and you pat her shoulders a few times, and she’s looking up at you with so much adoration in her eyes that it makes you want to cry.

“Thank you.” She says with a smile.

You’ve done enough crying, so you smile back at her.

You reach out and put your hand on her cheeks. They’re warm, and you’re starting to think that she lied about it being cold, probably just so she could wear your leather jacket. She didn’t really need an excuse though. There’s no doubt that you’d give up your jacket for Chloe Beale.

Her smile slowly fades as you lean in, and you close your eyes just as your lips touch her forehead. You know that you just kissed the scar there, and you wonder if it hurt her. She got it when she was only young, from falling off of her bike, but you don’t know, maybe it still hurts sometimes.

Whether it hurts or not, she doesn’t show it. Because when you pull away after a few seconds, her eyes are open and she’s staring right into your eyes, and you suddenly don’t know what to do.

Your hands are still on her cheeks, and you don’t know whether you should remove them. You probably should. It’s a little weird just sitting here with your hands on your best friend’s cheeks, but then again, it’s also a little weird how the two of you haven’t broke eye contact in like, thirty seconds, and you’re starting to feel really hot, and you know for a fact that your cheeks are burning up.

You make the mistake of looking down at Chloe’s lips, and you know that she saw you, because not two seconds later, she looks down at yours. You feel her hands come up to rest on your arms, and your knees are hurting from leaning on them for this long, but Chloe is looking back and forth between your eyes and your lips, and you suddenly don’t really care about the ground making dents in your kneecaps anymore.

You like looking into Chloe’s eyes. You like comparing the color of her eyes to different things, like the sea, or the sky, or the color of the lamp in your bedroom, or the color of the Bellas logo. But you don’t have chance to compare her eye color to anything tonight, because she closes them, and then she leans in, and you don’t even have chance to ask what she’s doing before you feel her lips on yours.

It’s nice. That’s the only way you can think to describe it. Her lips are soft, just like you imagined they would be – although you don’t exactly walk around imagining what Chloe Beale’s lips feel like on a day-to-day basis – and the kiss is slow, and close-mouthed, and honestly, it’s not all that interesting.

It’s a kiss.

But it’s a kiss with Chloe Beale, and you’ll be damned if you let it be a lousy one.

You stop kissing her for a second, and you know that she’ll probably end up saying something if you don’t kiss her again, so you quickly open your eyes to look at her. Her eyes are still closed, and she looks so pretty.

She always looks pretty, but man. Right now, she looks absolutely beautiful.

You can feel your stomach turning and you honestly feel sick, but in a good way. You’re not sure if that’s a thing. This kind of thing never happened with Jesse. Jesse didn’t make you feel as excited as Chloe makes you feel.

“Bec–“

“–Sh.” You interrupt her, before you lean in and kiss her again.

And this time you actually open your mouth, and you honestly give it all you’ve got, because even if this doesn’t work out, you could always blame it on the alcohol. But Chloe is kissing you back, equally as enthusiastic, and her hands run up your arms, up to your shoulders, and you think about all those times that Chloe has given you a massage. It’s an odd thing to think of right now, but it makes you smile, and then you feel Chloe smile into the kiss, and you laugh. You both laugh, and you break the kiss, and you rest your forehead against Chloe’s, and you don’t have to open your eyes to know that Chloe has a content smile on her face.

And maybe that’s the thing. Maybe the answer you should have given Chloe when she asked you what you want, is just simply ‘to be content.’

That’s how you feel right now, and judging by the way Chloe is holding you, she feels it too.


End file.
